


hereditary

by avoidfilledwithcelluloid



Series: death note short fic collections [3]
Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Digging into this tragic ass family, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Sibling Bonding, Yagami Family Dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 09:17:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17159354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidfilledwithcelluloid/pseuds/avoidfilledwithcelluloid
Summary: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”― Leo Tolstoya collection of tumblr inbox prompts centered around the Yagami family.





	1. You. I just need you right now.

**Author's Note:**

> i thought i'd start moving a bunch of my non-lawlight death note fics over to ao3. but i wanted to split the shipping ones off the Yagami family ones since they tend to just have a different tone aha. anyway.
> 
> this first fic is abt sayu coming home to find Light is over for dinner.

In the driveway is Light’s car. Sayu stops at the mailbox and looks to see if her penpal has sent her anything. None of the envelopes have her penpal’s name, so she just stuffs the rest of them under her arm and slaps the mailbox closed.

A little steam lets out of her as she gets to the door. If Light’s here, that means Misa has probably tagged along. She doesn’t dislike Misa but talking to her can get tiring. Her exams are in a week, every class has her doing hours of work and Sayu doesn’t want to hold a conversation with her brother’s girlfriend just because he’s too lazy to.

The door whistles when it opens and her mother calls out from the kitchen. Sayu calls back a hello while dropping the mail onto the key counter. Once inside the foyer, she slips off her shoes one by one and rounds the corner to the living room. On the couch, Light sits with his legs crossed and a book in one hand. He looks up but doesn’t say anything.

“Oh, hey,” she says and drops down on the seat next to him. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

“She’s doing a photoshoot,” he says. “I don’t know. I thought I’d stop by since I had some free time.”

Under his eyes there are bags forming. Light hasn’t been sleeping regularly. Sayu knows her brother’s sleeping schedule, has known it since they were kids, and he’s never looked tired before.

 _Maybe Misa is keeping him awake_ , she thinks. Whatever. Her brother’s sex life isn’t worth thinking about.

“What’re you reading?” Sayu reaches over Light’s arm to grab at his book which he pulls away from her. She leans over further, almost covering him with her body, and they struggle for a bit over the book until Sayu yanks it away. “Ooh. A detective novel, eh? Don’t you get enough of this stuff at your job?”

Light takes it back and lets out a frustrated sigh.

“You made me lose my place,” he says.

“Oh, you’ll get over it.” She waves a dismissive hand. “Anyway, are you staying for dinner?”

“I might.” Light folds the corner of a page and shuts the book. He leans onto the couch and spreads his arms across the back. He looks so old now and sometimes Sayu wishes she saw her brother more often. “Shouldn’t you be doing homework?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, probably.” A bright tune starts playing from Light’s pocket and he takes out his phone. “Who’s that?”

“Ugh,” he says. “Probably Misa.”

His face freezes as though he’s said something he shouldn’t and his eyes dart to Sayu’s. She just laughs, a little nervous, and shrugs.

“Hello?” he answers and his features roll into boredom as Sayu hears Misa’s voice come out of the speaker. “Yes, Misa, I’m at my family’s home. I should have left a note.”

“Light!” Misa’s tinny voice comes out almost like a whisper. “How could you leave me all alone like this?”

“You’re not alone,” Light says. “I just left for a minute. What did you need?”

“You,” Misa says. “I just need you right now.”

Light pinches the bridge of his nose and drops his head back. His eyes close like they always do when he’s thinking. She’s walked into something strange and now Sayu wants to leave. Every time Light talks to Misa, she feels like she’s watching a television show about someone who almost looks like her brother. Like if she tried to touch him now, her hand would fall through and only brush against static.

“Alright,” he says. “I’ll be back soon.”

“You better!” Misa says and Light hangs up without replying. Eyes still closed, he sits there with his phone in his hand and his legs crossed. Sayu hesitates and then twists her hands together in her lap.

“I guess you’re not staying?” She tries to laugh but the sound withers in her throat.

“No,” he says. “I don’t think I can.”

“I’m sure Mom can put something together for you to take home,” she says. “Maybe for you and Misa?”

“That’s fine. Misa’s probably making something right now.”

He gets up and his knees creak when he stands. Sayu moves to follow him but Light waves her off.

“Don’t worry. I’ll see you later, yeah?” Cupping his hand around his mouth, he shouts to the kitchen. “I have to go, Mom. I’ll call tonight.”

Her mother says something but Sayu loses whatever the words are as she watches Light leave. He carries himself stiffly. When he puts on his shoes, he slides on the shoe before tapping the toe to the floor and then moves onto the other one. She’s watched him do this a thousand times before and it’s something so repeated that it reassures her that he is her brother. He’s not just a a projection or a puppet but the person she used to sleep a room away from.

After the door shuts behind him, Sayu glances at the table and shoots up. She runs to the door, throws it open and yells out after Light’s car, which has already started down the street.

“Hey,” she says. “You forgot your book.”

The car keeps driving. Settling back on the door frame, she flips through the pages but doesn’t read any of the words. Probably something boring anyway. The front cover is a picture of a man in a dark shirt holding a paper and looking concerned with the author’s name written in gold script at the bottom.  _Eraldo Coil_.

Maybe she’ll read it


	2. Apple Pie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sachiko makes an apple pie and receives a phone call from Light

Fingers dug into a flour bag and spread it over the countertop until it was covered. Sachiko wiped her hands off on her skirt. White patches stuck to the pink fabric looking like snow on a flower patch. Out of a glass bowl, she pulled pie dough, put it on the white counter and patted it. Sitting on top of a mound of flour, the dough was a curled animal waiting to be treated gently. To the side was a bowl of apples cut into eighths and covered in cinnamon.

In the living room, Sayu brayed to her friend on her cell phone about their communications professor. Something about how he didn’t even read their papers and graded them all on if he liked them or not. Sachiko frowned but her heart was easy. She didn’t approve of her daughter disparaging her professors but just the sound of Sayu was good. Her voice gave the house a cheerful pulse that it lacked these days. Soichiro wasn’t around often. Light didn’t come over unless he needed to do laundry and even then, he brought Misa with him. He was supposed to join them for dinner tonight which meant she’d have to set a place for Misa as well.

Sachiko pulled out a long wooden rolling pin and started to stretch the dough. Underneath her hands, the rolling pin pushed wave-like against her palms. Each push was a mindless action, easy to do and then concentrate on other things. She opened the windows of her mind and let in some air to dust off her thoughts.

She liked Misa just fine. There wasn’t much about her to dislike beyond her continued girlishness, exaggerated by the mature figure Light struck next to her. Sachiko didn’t feel as though Misa was the best choice but at the very least she was a choice. For a long time, she had her doubts Light would settle into a girl, find one that fit him, before he was much older and she hadn’t expected Misa to be the one he made a home with. She pictured a more elegant sort of woman at her son’s side, a woman who could hold her own in a conversation and challenged Light. Of course, one could never truly predict their child’s decisions and Light had always been such a discerning young man. Misa must have some quality to her that attracted him even if Sachiko didn’t see it.

Sayu snorted and Sachiko pushed her rolling pin to the very edge of the dough. When they were children, she worried that Sayu might be covered by Light’s shadow. Once she started school, Sachiko and Soichiro thought perhaps they might be lucky enough for two little geniuses. That outcome never surfaced but Sayu didn’t seem upset to come home with poorer grades than her brother. Rather than trail behind him, she walked beside Light with her own accomplishments—her social skills and a second place trophy from a youth soccer league.

Leaning over, Sachiko closed one eye and checked the dough’s thickness. Perfect. Slipping careful hands beneath it, she lifted the dough and carried it over to the pie tin. With a gentle grace, she let it drape over the metal. Picking up a knife, she started to cut away the excess dough when the house phone rang. She put the knife down, wiped her hands again and took the green plastic phone off the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mom.” Light’s voice strained for politeness. “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m alright.” Sachiko tried to push down the worry welling up in her stomach. That strain only came through when Light had bad news. “How funny that you called. I was just thinking of you.”

“Really?” Genuine surprise lifted Light’s tone and the worry faded a touch. “Why?”

“Well,” she said. “You remember how you used to eat all those apples when you were younger? I thought it might be nice to have apple pie for dessert tonight, just as something fun. What do you think?”

“Hm? Oh. Yeah, that sounds great, Mom.” Rustling sounds in the background warned her he was at work. “It’s just that, well, I don’t think Misa and I will be able to make it.”

Her heart sucked into itself and dropped. For a moment, Sachiko thought maybe she heard wrong. Perhaps the phone had chopped Light’s words to make him cancel again.

“Are you sure?” The tentative pitch of her voice embarrassed her. To speak to her son in such a small way was ridiculous. “You haven’t come to dinner once this month.”

“I’ve just been,” Light paused, “busy lately. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I’m your mother.” Sachiko let her words go hard. “There’s a lot I can understand. But this is the third time you’ve canceled. I don’t want to tell you how to live your life but it tells a lot about your character when you don’t stick to your plans.”

Light huffed but she knew he was listening. When he got upset, that’s when she knew he absorbed what she said. It was the only time he left the door open a crack so she could come in.

“I just can’t come,” he said. “I don’t see how that says anything about my character.”

“You shouldn’t cancel plans the day of,” she said. “It’s very rude. I didn’t raise you to be rude.”

“Mom.”

“Light.”

Something tapped and she pictured him sitting in his little office, tapping his pencil to the desk in circles the way he used to when he did his homework. She’d seen his workplace and she knew he didn’t like it. He hadn’t said as much but in his eyes, disappointment surfaced when he told her this cubicle was his. She remembered when Soichiro first started and how his desk had been cluttered with their wedding photo, little framed pictures of Light and then Sayu. There were no pictures on Light’s desk.

Light sighed and the tapping stopped.

“Alright,” he said. “We’ll be there.”

“Good.” Sachiko grinned with a bit of unhappiness wedged between her teeth. “I’m very glad.”

“Of course.” A trickling laugh broke through the phone. It was so nice to hear Light laugh in his soft, sweet way. “Does that guilt trip work on Dad too?”

“Oh yes. But he usually gave me more heads up. I could prepare a better speech.”

Light let out a louder laugh that sounded like plastic wrap ripping and discomfort spiked through Sachiko. She preferred his other laugh.

“Okay,” Light said. “I have to go now. But I’ll see you tonight.”

“Yes.” Sachiko twisted the phone cord around her finger. “I can’t wait to see you.”

Silence carved a canyon between them before Light responded.

“Me too.” His tone was perfunctory but beneath it was a strange solemn tone. “Good bye, Mom. I love you.”

She repeated the phrase back and then hung up. On the counter, the pie sat with excess dough half cut and hanging on the side. Sayu cackled at something her friend said. Sachiko looked down at her skirt and shook her head. She’d need to change into something nicer for dinner.


	3. it’s over, it’s done, just leave it be.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> soichiro finds light sleeping on the taskforce couch in the second arc

In the long shadows of the living room, Soichiro watched his son breathe. Light had laid himself out, all five feet ten of him stretched to the full length of the couch. His breath was shallow and cautious as though he couldn’t make a sound higher than a whisper. Through the apartment windows, Tokyo’s night lights spilled over computer monitors and swivel chairs—over files and over Light’s body.

The rest of the investigative team vacated the makeshift apartment headquarters at eight on the dot, sometimes seven thirty on Fridays. But Light lingered and Soichiro fell in behind him. To watch Light now, asleep and quiet, struck him in a strange way. He wondered, for one second, if this was what his son might look like dead. But he didn’t stay on the thought and berated himself for it entirely. Soichiro stepped into the room and made his way toward Light to shake him on the shoulder.

Light flinched awake and his hands flew up, clutching at the air. Eyes wide and bright, his features spiked from their usual pleasantness. His mouth hung open but snapped shut when he noticed Soichiro. A soft, almost indulgent smile replaced his defensive expression and Light dropped his hands to his chest.

“Sorry,” he said. “How stupid. Shouldn’t have laid down—I knew I’d fall asleep but I did it anyway.”

“You ought to rest more.” Soichiro rounded the couch corner and moved to sit. Light slid into a sitting position to accommodate him. “Everyone else has gone home. You should go home too. Go see Misa.”

Light’s mouth pressed into a thin line and then curved into nothing more than amusement. He shook his head and he expelled a laugh, tinned and weak. The sound drew a tight string over Soichiro and cinched his body in discomfort. In the dark room, the lines of his son were faded and he couldn’t quite see him.

“Isn’t that what Mom used to say to you?” Light laughed again with more heart. Soichiro’s shoulders relaxed and he shook his head.

“I suppose I’m being hypocritical in telling you to slow down.” Cars honked out on the street over Soichiro’s speech and he saw Light’s eyes slide away from the conversation. “I don’t want to see you make my mistakes. You should be out experiencing life and not locking yourself up.”

“I can’t rest now.” With a fist squeezed on his knee, Light raised his voice into a fever pitch. “Kira’s work is ceaseless and we have to be just as motivated to get ahead of him. Otherwise, I’ll lose.”

He froze and his eyes darted to Soichiro. Licking his lips, Light leaned back on the couch and stretched his arms up.

“We’ll lose if we let Kira outpace us,” Light said and tilted so he faced Soichiro. “So I can’t rest. Not yet, Dad. I’ve got to beat him.”

Purple city lights fell into the hollows of his son and revealed a jagged body. The turtleneck he wore clung to prominent ribs and his jeans pulled away from his legs. In the face that once swelled with youthful plumpness, Soichiro saw the fragile jut of Light’s adulthood cut through space. When Light reached for his phone, dark and unmoving on the coffee table, his fingers were icicles cracking to life. He knew what Light looked like, saw the familiar shift of his movements like a skipping record still dancing out an odd tune. Sometimes Soichiro wondered if L had two graves—one in the dirt and the other inside Soichiro’s son.

“As your father,” he said, “I’m telling you to go home and sleep. In a bed, not on a couch or chair.”

Light waved a dismissive hand and popped open his phone. Off a little hook, a phone charm hung in the shape of an old anime character Soichiro remembered as a gift to Light from Sayu. His eyes glazed over in annoyance before Light shut the phone and shoved it in his pocket. He looked out the window and Soichiro followed his gaze. It landed on a telephone wire—black and thin across a faded evening sky—and then jumped back into the room to stare at Soichiro. Without any illumination, his eyes were a difficult color and wavered in their appearance.

“Light.” A weight sunk on Soichiro. The way his son looked, the way his son sat, was his fault. He constructed the man sitting next to him and he was proud but. He saw pieces missing. Somewhere in six years shards of Light fell off to reveal someone different. Someone made of bones. “Do you forgive me?”

“Forgive you?” Light blinked, bangs falling over his face. His hair was still boyishly long and touched the nape of his neck. Without his mother to tug at him, it seemed Light didn’t maintain a clipped length. “Dad, I don’t have anything to forgive you for. If anything, I should be asking you for forgiveness for making you stay late with me. You should go home too. Mom’ll get mad at me if she knows you stuck around just to wake me up.”

“She won’t.” Soichiro sighed. “I don’t really know why I’m asking your forgiveness. I suppose I’ve done things in the past that never quite settled. Things I did for the same reason you’re staying late—to stop Kira. Do you forgive me for those actions I took?”

“I—,” Light’s voice creaked and his hair covered his eyes completely. He turned and flexed his fingers in his lap. “It’s over. It’s done. Let’s just leave it be.”

He unfolded himself from the couch and stood straight backed above Soichiro. Even if he came to his full height, his son would still edge an inch above him. So Soichiro stayed seated as Light wandered the room to collect his things. Nothing carried through the room but the hum of computers. After he put his laptop into his bag, Light sighed.

“Dad.” Soichiro looked up and met his son’s gaze. He couldn’t read the emotions curled in Light’s eyes but he saw him smile. The sight eased his mind. He raised that smile; he knew when it was fake and when it was real. “I’m going. Tell Mom and Sayu hi for me.”

“Of course.” Clasping his hands to his knees, Soichiro leveraged himself up. Light bent a bit, almost to a bow, before leaving. His feet made no sound and all Soichiro heard was the door open before Light spoke again.

“I love you,” he said and shut the door before Soichiro could reply. In the dark room, he looked down at his hands and studied the lines there. He strained to hear Light’s footsteps on the building stairs but caught only the caws of crows flying past the window. He sat down on the couch and watched the sky turn from purple, to blue, to black.


	4. it doesn’t matter anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sayu visits light on death row after he's been caught as Kira

_This would have been easier if you were dead_ , Sayu thought. She didn’t know who “you” meant, exactly. Things would be much more simple were she the one dead but then again, everything would have been perfect if Light were dead. Across the table, he sat with wrists chained together and jagged fingernails. She imagined him in the womb, umbilical cord wrapped around his throat, and then blinked away from the image. This dark room made her thoughts grow cold.

“You’ve been chewing your nails.” Sayu watched Light’s shoulders roll at the comment. He hated when people caught him nail-biting. Before she might have ignored it, the way she ignored it since they were kids, but they weren’t in Before anymore. They were in the After. “Mom’s gonna be upset if she sees.”

Light sat up straighter, his face carved out in the grimy surroundings. When he took in a long breath, his chest wheezed but the way he held himself was too regal for the sound. Sayu’s attention flickered from his face to his chest to the scarred over bullet wound on his hand. She itched to reach out and touch it—dig her finger into it.

“How are you doing?” he asked. “Are you still doing okay at school?”

Sayu choked and then tucked her arms over his chest. Her hair, a little damp from the shower she took an hour earlier at home, swung in front of her eyes.

“I dropped out.”

“You can’t drop out.” The indignation in Light’s voice was tart. Sayu met it with a laugh. “I’m serious, Sayu. Dropping out—that’s like quitting.”

“It’s not like quitting,” she said. “It is quitting. Someone in this family has to know when to give up and it might as well be me.”

“You can’t—,” Light started but his voice died out. “Whatever. Fine. Give up. I’m sure you have your reasons.”

An abrupt wish swelled in Sayu—that she had never come to this visit. That she hadn’t let her mom guilt her into seeing Light again.  _He’s your only brother,_  Sachiko said in a tired, broken voice.  _If you don’t go, you’ll regret it. I promise you that._

“So.” On the table, she traced a circle with one finger. “How is prison?”

“I don’t want to talk about prison.” Light leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table. He settled his chin onto the nest of his fingers. “Tell me how Mom is.”

“She hasn’t stopped crying since the trial.” Sayu’s mouth tasted like a metal spoon. “Matsuda told me she cried in court too, when they read the verdict.”

“I know what she did,” Light snipped. “Don’t talk to Matsuda.”

“Why not?” She couldn’t help the petulance infecting her voice. Light clicked his tongue.

“Because he’s only trying to date you,” he said. “He’s always trying to do that sort of stuff with younger women. He ought to find someone his own age.”

Matsuda was the one who called Sayu, before her mother told her, before the news rolled across every television in the world. She picked up the phone to the grated, horrible voice of Matsuda, mid-sob, saying her brother killed people. Killed more than a hundred people. Killed more than a thousand. At times, when she closed her eyes, Sayu heard Matsuda’s voice still in her ear, rattling around in uncovered sorrow.

 _He did it,_ Matsuda choked out.  _He did all of it. He was Kira, Sayu._

“He’s a nice person,” she said. “He’s a better person than you.”

Light let out a soft cough and beneath it was a tiredness—a thick tiredness. Sayu frowned but couldn’t stop looking at her brother. She searched him for some semblance of who she remembered. If he turned his head in a special way, perhaps the shadows would cut him just enough to show her the real Light. But when he looked to the side, she only saw how thin his cheeks were and the pointed jut of his nose. It was their father’s nose.

“Why didn’t you come to the trial?” A weak, near childish note peaked in Light’s voice and surprised Sayu out of her observations. Instead of looking anymore, she turned her gaze down to her hands. She studied the small cut on her index and a bug bite on her knuckle.

“I was sick.” Light’s lawyer had called and asked both she and her mother to stand as character witnesses. Sachiko had agreed before he finished asking but Sayu said no. She hadn’t ever spoken so firmly, not in her whole life. “I needed to stay home.”

“I missed you.” His tone was soft. It called to mind a children’s talk show host—something harmless and easily trusted. That voice sounded so close to her brother’s, a shade away from being his. But Sayu didn’t want to hear shades.

“Stop it.” Heat rose in her throat and rolled out her mouth. “Stop doing that.”

“I’m just trying to talk to you.” Light’s voice sunk with fake comfort. “I just want to know what you’re doing.”

“Shut up.” Sayu shook her head. “I don’t—I don’t want to talk to you about that.”

“Fine.” Whatever feigned softness was in Light’s voice fell like a curtain from a window and Sayu, undeniably, saw into her brother’s house. All the floor cold hardwood and the furniture tipped over. Wallpaper ripped in jagged slashes and doors with chains across them, shaking from secrets. “What do you want to talk about? Why did you come?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Well.” A laugh crackled out of Light that slithered down Sayu’s spine. “Isn’t that what everyone wants? Everyone wants to see Kira behind bars. You want to see him too, right? You want to see what a monster your brother is?”

He snorted and threw his hands up. His hair, long and stringy, swung as he gesticulated. Sayu scooted her chair back but Light didn’t notice.

“You should have been at the trial,” he said. “All those stupid people, thinking they could judge my work. They looked at me as nothing more than a common criminal, Sayu. As though I didn’t save their ignorant souls with every degenerate I wiped off the earth. You think you can judge me too? No one can. And no one will.”

“They already did.” Sayu swallowed and continued. “You can’t even hear yourself but if you could—I don’t know. Maybe you’d still believe what you’re saying.”

“How can I not believe myself?” Light shook his head, the spitting image of Sayu just a few minutes prior. “How can I desert myself as thousands desert me as we speak? I know I did everything I could. I know I was right.”

Sayu clutched her fist and vibrated. A great and terrible storm roiled in her stomach that lifted until it swarmed her head. With thunder groaning beneath her skull, she opened her mouth and let lighting strike out.

“You killed Dad.”

Ice crawled over Light’s posture and he sat in a rictus snap. Neither of them spoke but the statement lingered in the air loud enough that they didn’t need to. Tears threatened to spill the longer Sayu sat quiet but she refused to speak. Not until Light said something.

“You don’t understand.” The words wrenched out of him and scrapped against her ears. “He wasn’t supposed to—it wasn’t the plan. None of this was supposed to happen.”

“That wasn’t the plan?” Sayu snapped. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

She opened her mouth, a fury balled up on her tongue, but a raw dripping sob stopped her. Light’s shoulders rattled as he brought his hands to his face. Just as his laugh cracked, the sound of his crying was gushed with bitterness. They were the fat sobs of a child who didn’t know what they’d done, only that it was wrong.

“Light.”

“He wasn’t supposed to die.” Light spoke in wet notes. “I didn’t kill him.”

“C’mon.” Sayu shifted in her seat. She forgot, after so many years watching Light through his smokescreen, what a human looked like under there. It was very ugly. “It doesn’t matter, okay? Stop crying.”

“I can’t.” A whittled whine issued from Light’s throat. “Sayu. Do you hate me?”

“I—,” she sighed. “I love you.”

“Then why didn’t you come to the trial?”

Eyes squeezed shut, Sayu bit her lip and felt her own tears glide down her cheeks.

“Because I didn’t want to see you again,” she said. “Because I knew you did all those things and if I saw you, I’d have to see Kira. I love you but I—I don’t think I forgive you.”

She didn’t speak after that. Neither did Light. Outside the visiting room, someone whistled a rhythmless tune. Then Light swallowed and sat up to his full height again.

“Who do you see now?” he asked.

The skin around his eyes was rubbed red from tears and his mouth was still crooked from grief. When Sayu peered into her brother’s house now, she saw a landscape blown around but still intact. She saw a couple keys left in their locks and on the doorstep, a beaten down welcome mat. Carefully, she pulled the curtain back across until she didn’t see inside anymore. Light smiled at her and Sayu let her lips flinch into a smile as well.

“I see my brother,” she said.

**Author's Note:**

> did you like these lil fics? think u might want to hear more? then go follow [my dang blog!](http://translightyagami.tumblr.com)


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